reframing femininity
Dreams awaiting daylight. I have so many. Planted in the secret, quiet confines of a tender heart. But how do you dream anew after years of hopes unanswered? After giving your all and coming so close but it not being quite enough? How do you dare ask for the impossible, when you’re battered and bruised?…
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“Why do you say you have no one?” Stare. “What makes you feel no one understands?” Stare. “Can you make a box in your mind and fit the stories inside?” Stare. Blank. I stared. Thoughts echoed inside but I didn’t dare say them out-loud.
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I stood in the spotlight, strumming the first four chords I’d ever learned on guitar over and over and over again. I couldn’t remember the first note of the song. I’d been playing guitar for over ten years, having played in front of people hundreds of times. A minute went by. Another minute passed and no notes came. One…
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Money was tight. I mean tight. There wasn’t any extra, not a lick. We had stepped out in faith to build the house. THE house. This was the house we would stay in forever. This was the house our children would move out of and our grandchildren would run into. We had been working and…
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“Elephants,” I thought. “No, it was a whale.” I read about her a few months ago. Her sweet baby had died and she glided through the ocean with a small body on her back, unable to let go. Her whole pod surrounded her as she carried her lifeless child for 17 days. I like to think that…
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One of the sessions I attended at a recent conference was about resilience and optimism. The presenter said it was once believed that resilience was an inherited quality, but we now know that resiliency skills can be taught. As she spoke, different life events came to mind, some I had not thought of for many…
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Fifth grade me walked around elementary school wearing a pink sweat suit with penguins embroidered on the front and Velcro sneakers. Glasses framed my brown-black eyes, and my teeth boasted braces. I had a vague impression that this look wasn’t quite right for a preadolescent, but I couldn’t figure out how to make the jump…
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I missed my deadline. The deadline set for this very piece you are reading—I missed it. I don’t have much of an explanation except that, lately, life has kind of been like a hail storm in August.
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It’s not often that as a year begins, I can already name the major milestones the coming months will hold. This spring, I will be moving so my landlords can sell their property. Not too long after that, I’ll transition from course work in my graduate degree to writing my graduate thesis. My boyfriend and…
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“Never let the fire in your heart go out. Keep it alive.” Romans 12:11 The entrance into the new year has surprisingly been held in the embrace of anam ċara. “Anam ċara means soul friend,” John O’Donohue writes. “The anam ċara was a person to whom you could reveal the hidden intimacies of your life.…
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